saturday morning 70

April 25, 2009 8:33 PM

Count Chocula::Freakies::Honda 600::Quisp::Pufnstuf::Spümcø - Quaker "Quisp"
posted by vronsky (43 comments total)

I was expecting something different from the Honda 600 link but left satisfied, regardless.

Saw Shogun at a very, very impressionable age
posted by mrt at 8:37 PM on April 25

::Context?::
posted by orthogonality at 8:37 PM on April 25

> ::Context?::

Hamburger patches. They grow on plants. Duh.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:42 PM on April 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

I loved Freakies.
posted by Balisong at 8:51 PM on April 25

As a child, I would have found the McDonald's commercial creepy and absolutely terrifying. Good thing I didn't grow up in the late 60s.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 8:57 PM on April 25

Also, Spumco is good for some hearty lulz.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:00 PM on April 25

I'd be willing to bet that the boy (or at least the boy's voice) in the Sugar Bear commercial is Peter Robbins, who voiced Charlie Brown in the 1960s.
posted by azaner at 9:08 PM on April 25

Wow, the Spümcø - Quaker "Quisp" ad was fucking great. I was nervous for a minute there.
posted by heyho at 9:09 PM on April 25 [2 favorites has favorites]

I don't think a post that consists entirely of links to old commercials on youtube is the best of the web.

Oh wait, there's a few colons in between the links.
posted by onya at 9:32 PM on April 25

Everyone knows Freakies, but I liked the Fruity Freakies. They had magnets as a prize for a long time, and I never got anything but Grumble, who looked like an orange frog with 2 legs. Other favorites I seem to be the only one that ate them: Moonstones, and Sir Grapefellow, which is what you ate if you thought Count Chocula didn't have enough sugar in it.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 9:34 PM on April 25 [3 favorites has favorites]

What did Big Mac do in MvDonaldsland anyway? Hang out with the mayor all the time?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 9:39 PM on April 25

entirely of links to old commercials

the poster got sneaky there at the end. Not that seeing the whole thing would have been worth my time, of course.
posted by mrt at 9:42 PM on April 25

I had that Sugar Bear balloon! It tore at the mouthpiece rather quickly, though, and became useless.

That Honda 600 with the obvious movie-Jap accent? The horror, the horror. Half expected Kato and the Green Hornet to show up.
posted by dhartung at 9:48 PM on April 25

And that's why they took Quisp off the market. The End.
posted by boo_radley at 9:54 PM on April 25

The recent Quisp ad is one of the most bizarre ads I've seen in some time. Did Quaker really pay Spümcø to make that?
posted by grouse at 10:41 PM on April 25

GF of mine in college still had the beloved Freakies t-shirt she got by sending in collected boxtops when she was twelve. She had of course Grown Up some since then, and when she wore that shirt it was a glorious thing to behold.
posted by squalor at 11:03 PM on April 25 [3 favorites has favorites]

Don't start browsing the other commercials in the suggested links. There is of course the bizarre first McDonald's commercial..and then there is this monstrosity.
posted by Xoebe at 11:36 PM on April 25

And that's why they took Quisp off the market. The End.

Apparently, you can still buy Quisp direct from General Mills via their website and also at Dollar General Stores.

Quisp Ad by Jay Ward (creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle) which goes a long way toward explaining the Spümcø link.
posted by anastasiav at 11:48 PM on April 25

...and then there is this monstrosity.

It isn't real...it is from a fake documentary: C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Written and directed by a black man.

Anyway, I was born in 1972 so these clips are of some interest to me....and I really want one of those Honda 600 sport coupes now.
posted by GavinR at 12:10 AM on April 26

I wish youtube links were more semantically transparent. Did anyone mention Z-trip's take on cartoons and cereal?
posted by fcummins at 1:25 AM on April 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

Okay, whose idea of a joke was it to get a woman with a heavy Japanese accent to go on TV and say "Bob Rosenthal, Arlington, Virginia"?
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:21 AM on April 26

dhartung: "That Honda 600 with the obvious movie-Jap accent?"

I think that was a real accent. It wasn't just her pronunciation, her intonation and the way she spaced the words make it sound like her English was real bad and she was just reading off a card.
posted by dunkadunc at 2:38 AM on April 26

Oh man! I have been had :P I have been wanting to see that CSA movie for a long time, too. My bad. carry on.

And, FWIW I clearly recall seeing some of those ads on TV. The color was a lot better than the videos on YT. The McDonalds, Doritos and Frankenberry/Count Chocula ads were pretty common. There was a series of Doritos ads using the same Freddy Fender looking character.

One ad that stuck with me was when they introduced breakfast at McDonald's. The ad went "What's up? Breakfast! At McDonald's!". To this day any time anyone says "What's up?" I reflexively think "...breakfast...at McDonald's..." Haven't been able to find an ad/link for you though.
posted by Xoebe at 3:04 AM on April 26

Those you you who grew up in the DC area might remember Jhoon Rhee Taekwondo: "Nobody Bothers Me!"

With music by Nils Lofgren, natch.
posted by bardic at 3:16 AM on April 26

Their current website is pretty trippy, too.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:37 AM on April 26

That Count Chocula ad realy worked, here I am still a loyal customer 37 years later.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:39 AM on April 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm mystified. What kind of analogy is this?
posted by Pronoiac at 3:47 AM on April 26

MaryDellamorte: "As a child, I would have found the McDonald's commercial creepy and absolutely terrifying. Good thing I didn't grow up in the late 60s."

H.R. Pufnstuf (note the spelling) is awesome. I'm amazed someone hasn't done a tribute FPP yet.

BTW the Krofft brothers sued McDonalds for that commercial:

After the first McDonaldland commercials began airing in January 1971, the Kroffts sued for copyright infringement. When the case went to trial in 1973, their lawyers showed the jury several H.R. Pufnstuf episodes and McDonaldland commercials and pointed out the obvious similarities. McDonald's and Needham responded that the show and the commercials weren't exactly the same. For example, Mayor McCheese and Pufnstuf were each the mayor of a fanciful land, but McCheese was a cheeseburger in pink formal wear while Pufnstuf was a dragon.

The jury, and later the appeals court, didn't buy it. "We do not believe that the ordinary reasonable person, let alone a child, viewing these works will even notice that Pufnstuf is wearing a cummerbund while Mayor McCheese is wearing a diplomat's sash," the appeals court wrote. The court held that the defendants had wrongfully appropriated the "total concept and feel" of H.R. Pufnstuf, anticipating the "look and feel" argument made by litigious computer software developers years later. The Kroffts were awarded a big chunk of dough.

Just one of the many backstories to Pufnstuf.
posted by stbalbach at 5:15 AM on April 26

Oops, better link for "hasn't done", but still no dedicated Pufnstuf FPP.
posted by stbalbach at 5:17 AM on April 26

There's something very Borg Cube about the Spümcø ad
posted by mattoxic at 5:31 AM on April 26

The Spümcø Quisp piece was one of the first things I worked on there! Yes, Quaker really did pay John to make that thing. The setup for the story was a page of comics that ended on a cliffhanger, with a link to their website - which had that cartoon.

It was like the fourth thing Spümcø ever did in Flash.

also it is making me happy to see other people spelling the name right with the ü and the ø for once.
posted by egypturnash at 6:08 AM on April 26 [3 favorites has favorites]

As a child, I would have found the McDonald's commercial creepy and absolutely terrifying.

Literally the first memory I have is of a nightmare about the big purple one chasing me. Or rather just running towards me menacingly, on a white background because my brain apparently wasn't yet developed enough to handle both foreground and background elements at the same time.

(Now that I look him up to remind myself what his name was -- the Grimace -- it turns out he was originally supposed to be evil. I feel vindicated.)
posted by ook at 6:25 AM on April 26

sigh. my frugal mother wouldn't buy any of the fad cereals. i distinctly remember coming home for a visit 20 years later, opening the cupboard, and finding some rot-your-teeth cereal. i pulled the box out of the cupboard, whirled around, and said, 'what's this?' 'it's for the [grand] kids,' she replied.

and there i was, in my late 20s, jealous of my nieces because my mother bought them cocoa puffs. and 20 years after that, i'm still pissed.
posted by msconduct at 6:32 AM on April 26 [2 favorites has favorites]

And, for all of those following this thread who aren't eleventybillion years old:
Commercials from the 1980s.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 7:23 AM on April 26

oldnet Freakies Cereal website
posted by humannaire at 7:40 AM on April 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

I had a Freakies t-shirt.
posted by notyou at 8:28 AM on April 26

More McDonalds weirdness, this time with a grouchy pirate! And here are more Spümcø ads.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:39 AM on April 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

I was 10 when the Freakies commercial came out, and I can still hear that first line in my head- "We are the Freakies, we are the Freakies, and this is our Freakies treeeeeeee. We never miss a meal, cuz we love our cer-e-eeel." I couldn't recall the rest, so, thanks.

I voted for Quake in the Quisp vs Quake battle. I miss Quake because the spokes-cartoon-man was sexy in my little gay boy opinion; also my twin brother was a Quisp devotee.

The narrative was prescient.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 10:29 AM on April 26

egypturnash! You are to regale us with further tales of the awesome John K. I DECREE IT!

please?
posted by JHarris at 1:10 PM on April 26

(Now that I look him up to remind myself what his name was -- the Grimace -- it turns out he was originally supposed to be evil. I feel vindicated.)

Nothing can kill the Grimace.
posted by JHarris at 1:14 PM on April 26

okay. i'm not sure whether i'm proud of or embarrassed about the fact that i can sing the freakies song all the way through from memory, complete with dancing! and could probably ace a pop quiz on who was who in the group. (mom still has some freakies magnets on her fridge.)

what i'd really love to find is the animated lifesavers commercial that was . . . um, a bit psychedelic with dancing critters carrying a giant roll of lifesavers singing "hey lifesavers!" i've searched around from time to time online hoping someone will put it up somewhere,sometime, and there ARE rumors and whispers of its existence, but every time i think i've got it dead to rights, i'll follow a lead, heart pounding, only to find--nothing . . .

sigh. such a tragedy.

heh.
posted by miss patrish at 2:44 PM on April 26

They sell Quisp at the Marc's chain in Ohio, too. Not bad stuff, I have a box in my cupboard right now.
posted by HopperFan at 2:46 PM on April 26

This reminds me that I need to buy my complete set of plastic Freakies figurines back.
posted by pashdown at 6:17 PM on April 27